Participation in Local Politics a Pressing Need: Elected Officials
By Ras H. Siddiqui
The League of California Cities is an organization which has been shaping California politics since 1898. It is certainly not a new kid on the block as it continues to deliver a variety of important services through advocacy in the California Legislature, at the ballot box, in the courts, and by outreach through which it informs and educates the public. And it also offers education and training programs to teach current city officials the ropes of good governance.
Sacramento was privileged to host the “League of California Cities Annual Conference and Expo” at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center for three days (September 22 to 24, 2021), an event which brought together many dignitaries to our capital city including at least seven serving Pakistani-Americans.
This writer could not pass up the invitation when the now “Elder Statesman” of community activism in the San Francisco Bay Area, Attorney Javed Ellahie called for a media opportunity to interact with elected (California) City Councilmembers in one place. Javed is himself an elected (2018) Councilmember (and currently Mayor Pro Tempore), City of Monte Sereno where he and his wife Naveeda have lived since 1987. Over the past several decades he has been involved in the Pakistani-American community not only as a leader but in an advisory capacity as well. Javed understood the need for Muslims to become active in local politics quite early and has been encouraging others to become participants long before he himself jumped into the election arena and succeeded.
This meeting on 9/22/2021 was originally scheduled to be held at the Haveli Grill but due to a power outage there (unusual for Sacramento) the venue was changed to Al-Maidah Restaurant not too far away. In attendance besides Javed and other media were Waseem Ahmed, Shak Khan, Ali Sajjad Taj and Sabina Zafar. It was great that five out of the seven or eight invited Pakistani-American City Councilmembers were able to make it to this dinner meet. The Pakistani delicacies from Al-Maidah were appreciated by all before we got down to business. This writer asked each elected representative to share their background and their reasons for participating in local politics. The answers were delivered mostly in the Urdu language so the translation attempted here may not be exact.
Waseem Ahmed, City Councilmember from Chowchilla, said that he is originally from Islamabad, Pakistan and moved here in 1985, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and then moved to the Central Valley. He said that he noticed that our people were not much into local political participation and did not have direct representation in the system. He added that he was previously on the Chowchilla Planning Commission for several years and was convinced by political trends to step up and run for election. He was elected to his first term in 2014. He also added that he is trying to get more people from our community involved locally so that we can all be better represented where we live.
Shak Khan is a newly elected (2020) Lodi City Councilmember. He said that that he was originally from the Attock area of Pakistan (He is multi-talented and besides English speaks Pashto, Hindko, Punjabi and Urdu). He added that he moved to Lodi at a very young age and that he was the first Pakistani to be elected to the local city council. Lodi has a significant Pakistani population, around 4,000, he said, and he felt that the community was not being proportionately represented. Shak explained that this (US) is home, he grew up here, and our kids are also growing up here, so he thought that it would be best if he participated in local politics to represent all the community of the area. He added that by the grace of God, he was elected in his first attempt and that that he also hoped to be able to better connect the local Pakistani-origin community with the mainstream.
Sabina Zafar is a shiningexample of Pakistani-American women active in California politics. She is a Councilmember City of San Ramon, a diverse and relatively affluent bay area community. She said that she was serving her first term and that she was originally from the Rawalpindi-Islamabad area of Pakistan, having moved to the US around 25 years ago and moving to San Ramon around 16 years ago. She added that her kids were very young then and that she first got involved in the local school PTA. As the kids got older, the community grew bigger, the San Ramon population doubled in size and became much more diverse. She said that the diversity was not represented in the City Council. She pointed to two other factors which encouraged her to run. 1) She had lived in this community for a long time and 2) Her family in Pakistan had been involved in public service (and PPP politics). She first ran for office in 2016 and didn’t win at that time. She ran again in 2018 and got elected to the city council. Sabina said that cities and at the local level is where you can make a real difference.
Javed Ellahie does not need any elaborate introduction. He said that he was honored to be in such a distinguished company and added that we do not succeed as one person, we succeed as a team, so it is important to build one. He also added that ultimately the goal should be full participation by Pakistani-Americans in the local political process. He said that some people want to directly run for Congress and that in in his opinion it was not the right way. Start locally and do the hard work, and then get the wider community to support you, said Javed.
Ali Sajjad Taj is a City Councilmember from Artesia California and a pioneer in his own right. He was first elected in December 2013 and started his term in 2014. He has also served as Mayor of Artesia twice. And in Sacramento, not only was he attending this League of California Cities Conference in his Councilmember capacity, but he is also its First Vice President now. Ali is originally from Lahore and immigrated to the US in the 1990’s. He said that the League of California Cities is a large and influential organization and hoped that more Pakistani-Americans were able to benefit from it through their participation. He added that in reality power lies at the local level and that all politics is local politics. If we do not have the trash picked up and the trees trimmed, we are going to have problems, he said.
To conclude one can only add that these elected officials are possibly the most important part of the Pakistani-American community in California, ones which we cannot choose to ignore. They are the building blocks of an edifice which has to be built in this country. America is our home and although Pakistani politics may be interesting, we need to concentrate much more on the home front.
